BfA PvP predictions

[Arrashi]

My prediction - there will be many people who haven't played beta/don't read forums thinking that war mode will be some great PvP restoration project.

2 days later those people will be all over forums posting how bad pvp is.

[Swizzington]

If they want to make gear matter in pvp without making it mandatory for pve players, why don't they add resilience back to pvp gear? I loved how resilience worked in wotlk.

[Deleted]

Look like I'll go with my BM hunter for casual pvp (wpvp, duels and random bgs). For a while it was a tough choice between going with my WW monk or my BM hunter, but then I saw Arrow Assassin, and he swears by BM hunter, demo lock and feral druid to be the best choices for casual pvp, while WW monk has received massive nerfs compared to Legion and it's rather meh for pvp in the beta.

I considered demo lock, but the thing is locks get piled on in bgs and they can't get away.

- - - Updated - - -

If they want to make gear matter in pvp without making it mandatory for pve players, why don't they add resilience back to pvp gear? I loved how resilience worked in wotlk.

Because then the PVE master race will complain that their pixel-killing gear is no good for PVP, and Blizzard doesn't want to offend their prime customers.

[Knolan]

My prediction - there will be many people who haven't played beta/don't read forums thinking that war mode will be some great PvP restoration project.

2 days later those people will be all over forums posting how bad pvp is.

To be honest, it looks good so far (except 3 talents is too few, I was expecting it to be four).

Of course I am betting that there will be 40 man raids farming the other faction at some point, but you can simply turn it off.

I had a LOT of fun hunting people on Timeless Island during MoP, to get the bloody coins mount, I hope it will get to that point again after some time.

Right, it is very confusing. I think many players expect the return of currencies.. and not just the elite currency. People want to gear up in random battlegrounds as they were used to like before legion.

To be fair, that is what everyone is asking blizz, random rewards are terrible on PvP and I can't believe they keep trying it. Ever since they tried it on Ashran it has received negative feedback. IMO MoP system was perfect and I am not sure why change it.

[Conditions]

Arenas are pretty much over, if they're lucky the RBG changes might save rated PvP but as an EU player, we will never be active as the US in RBGs so it's unlikely. The cancerfest of cheating will just demotivate anyone who TRIES to push. If the world pvp doesn't turn out as good as they hype it up to be, either a large portion of PvPers that aren't playing for the blizzcon cash cow will move to Vanilla or will just outright quit after getting the mount once it's in a recolor that they like as well as just picking up the elite. What's left of Arena will be - to put it crudely - a melee fuckfest.

PvP power + resilience were both good mechanics, I don't know why they ever got rid of either of them for templates since PvP power kinda functioned as a template in itself and we lost the ability to gem it after Mists anyway, so the facade of "templates make balancing easier" was just sheer nonsense since everyone had almost the same gear anyway and in Cataclysm they'd already proved they had the ability to balance changes without hurting PvE (See: Colossal Smash).

Also does combat still have that dice roll shit in BFA? If it does, doesn't matter what changes they make - it will never ever be a good spec lol, we thought the same thing when Legion came out.

[Kralljin]

PvP power + resilience were both good mechanics, I don't know why they ever got rid of either of them for templates since PvP power kinda functioned as a template in itself and we lost the ability to gem it after Mists anyway, so the facade of "templates make balancing easier" was just sheer nonsense since everyone had almost the same gear anyway and in Cataclysm they'd already proved they had the ability to balance changes without hurting PvE (See: Colossal Smash).

The issue is that Blizzard never used PvP gear to balance classes as far as i know.

At least i don't remember that they slapped more PvP Power / Resilience on a Classes' set to buff their durability or damage, nor did they nerf sets from classes that were too strong.
The only thing they ever did was to change abilities to deal more / less damage in PvP, but that was really just a half assed way to fix things and up until WoD, rarely used.

Furthermore, the resilience system basically underwent changes with every single expasion, like really, every single WoW expansion somehow changed the Resilience stat.

Up until MoP, you had this whole issue of PvE gear floating around, which culminated in the shitfest that was late Cata RBG, where the RANDOM DROP trinkets from DS along with Deathwing weapon shat all over any PvP weapon / trinket.

Like really, people who want those times back give me the impression they're not aware of what they're asking for.

This whole issue of PvE gear infesting PvP wasn't resolved until they basically blocked Trinkets from working in PvP and WoD introducing the Ilvl boost for PvP items.


In my opinion, the template system is basically what people have been asking for years, you don't need PvE stuff to be successful in PvP and you have an additional tuning knob to balance classes, instead of just tinkering with multipliers on Spells vs. Players.

Also does combat still have that dice roll shit in BFA?

Outlaw saw some tournament play as far as i know.

[Nerovar]

The issue is that Blizzard never used PvP gear to balance classes as far as i know.

At least i don't remember that they slapped more PvP Power / Resilience on a Classes' set to buff their durability or damage, nor did they nerf sets from classes that were too strong.
The only thing they ever did was to change abilities to deal more / less damage in PvP, but that was really just a half assed way to fix things and up until WoD, rarely used.

Furthermore, the resilience system basically underwent changes with every single expasion, like really, every single WoW expansion somehow changed the Resilience stat.

Up until MoP, you had this whole issue of PvE gear floating around, which culminated in the shitfest that was late Cata RBG, where the RANDOM DROP trinkets from DS along with Deathwing weapon shat all over any PvP weapon / trinket.

Like really, people who want those times back give me the impression they're not aware of what they're asking for.

This whole issue of PvE gear infesting PvP wasn't resolved until they basically blocked Trinkets from working in PvP and WoD introducing the Ilvl boost for PvP items.


In my opinion, the template system is basically what people have been asking for years, you don't need PvE stuff to be successful in PvP and you have an additional tuning knob to balance classes, instead of just tinkering with multipliers on Spells vs. Players.



Outlaw saw some tournament play as far as i know.

I don't see how the Legion system was an improvement over WoD when it comes to PvP gear.

[Kralljin]

I don't see how the Legion system was an improvement over WoD when it comes to PvP gear.

I don't see how it made it worse.

The ultimate goal of Blizzard was that people went full PvP armor (which has ALWAYS been the goal of Resilience / PvP Power), so the customization there goes up in fire already, you wore your 4pc, Offset item and then bought every item with your favorite secondary stat from the vendor, enchanted said secondary stat on every piece available, there you go.
Thanks to the WoD design, the game usually told you what's the best stat for your spec, as every spec received a 5% bonus on a certain secondary stat.

Customization looks different in my opinion.

The only difference between the WoD and the Template system is the fact that the Template varies between specs and the WoD one basically gave everyone the same amount of total stats.

The major difference is that the Blizzard actively used the Template system to balance the game and flesh out certain class aspects that went down the drain over the years.

Nowadays Classes like Ret,Dk or Warrior can tank damage better than rogues, because they have more Health and more Versatility, in WoD everyone basically ran around with the same HP pool, excluding warlocks.

[Conditions]

The issue is that Blizzard never used PvP gear to balance classes as far as i know.

At least i don't remember that they slapped more PvP Power / Resilience on a Classes' set to buff their durability or damage, nor did they nerf sets from classes that were too strong.
The only thing they ever did was to change abilities to deal more / less damage in PvP, but that was really just a half assed way to fix things and up until WoD, rarely used.

Furthermore, the resilience system basically underwent changes with every single expasion, like really, every single WoW expansion somehow changed the Resilience stat.

Up until MoP, you had this whole issue of PvE gear floating around, which culminated in the shitfest that was late Cata RBG, where the RANDOM DROP trinkets from DS along with Deathwing weapon shat all over any PvP weapon / trinket.

Like really, people who want those times back give me the impression they're not aware of what they're asking for.

This whole issue of PvE gear infesting PvP wasn't resolved until they basically blocked Trinkets from working in PvP and WoD introducing the Ilvl boost for PvP items.


In my opinion, the template system is basically what people have been asking for years, you don't need PvE stuff to be successful in PvP and you have an additional tuning knob to balance classes, instead of just tinkering with multipliers on Spells vs. Players.



Outlaw saw some tournament play as far as i know.

PvP gear did have a balancing element to it that barely anyone seems to have picked up on especially in WoD. Certain pieces that you pretty much had to have or had alternatives that were equally shit would have literally the most horrendous stats. I'd like to think that was intentional considering conveniently with this - you could no longer reforge gear. To be honest, they didn't have to, in Mists the balance was extremely good all things considered (yes "muh LSD/LSD2 was too strong" - we've had a comp that's been ridiculous every season, no amount of balancing will change that), it was WoD when shit hit the fan - the pvp gear changes were horrible at the start, rng boxes for days. Also . Also, for the first season, coin was a fucking crazy strong Rogue trinket even though it broke trinket set bonus and had no pvp power before Blizzard curbstomped it. There was a slip up!

The DS trinkets like cunning and vial were just disgusting.


"In my opinion, the template system is basically what people have been asking for years, you don't need PvE stuff to be successful in PvP and you have an additional tuning knob to balance classes, instead of just tinkering with multipliers on Spells vs. Players."

Certain class synergies which have existed for several consecutive seasons (WW/DK and Lock/Shaman being two of them) that are absolutely obscene generally cause far more havoc than numbers tuning. Blizzard still seem to believe that blindly fucking with throughput is always the answer. Sometimes it is, but usually in the process they'll just create another evil. Assassination Rogue had multiple agility nerfs until they realised the problem was largely contained to poison bomb procs combined with MS effect (which sub of course, didn't have) as opposed to Assassination's overall damage which outside of Cataclysm and most of Mists has generally been considered high anyway - the difference is some genius thought "let's also give them Shadowstep, despite the fact you're supposed to trade mobility for pressure as Assa" - the higher uptime made Assa look better than it actually was.

[Cyanu]

i have a rule: whenever i see someone's feedback being 100% positive or negative i just dismiss it as some entitled/immature guy being whiny for not getting 100% of what he envisioned (especially if he got 70+%)

for rated PvP i can't tell but with warmode and the dueler's guild casual PvP is certainly going to be hotter than ever

king of the hill style duels will become very popular for people into dueling and warmode will replace BS gankfests on lowbie zones

as for rated whatever good i can see for it is from the spill over of the increased participation in casual PvP

anyways i have no illusions about things being perfect but i can see a clear improvement ahead

[Kralljin]

PvP gear did have a balancing element to it that barely anyone seems to have picked up on especially in WoD. Certain pieces that you pretty much had to have or had alternatives that were equally shit would have literally the most horrendous stats.

Problem is that stuff like boots, rings and shit were basically game wide, not spec specific, i really think it was more or less unintentional that certain specs got fucked over.

Second, secondary stats were not as powerful as they were in early Legion, Ilvl is still Ilvl, and just because you had shit boots, didn't mean your entire character suddenly sucked.

Certain class synergies which have existed for several consecutive seasons (WW/DK and Lock/Shaman being two of them) that are absolutely obscene generally cause far more havoc than numbers tuning. Blizzard still seem to believe that blindly fucking with throughput is always the answer. Sometimes it is, but usually in the process they'll just create another evil. Assassination Rogue had multiple agility nerfs until they realised the problem was largely contained to poison bomb procs combined with MS effect (which sub of course, didn't have) as opposed to Assassination's overall damage which outside of Cataclysm and most of Mists has generally been considered high anyway - the difference is some genius thought "let's also give them Shadowstep, despite the fact you're supposed to trade mobility for pressure as Assa" - the higher uptime made Assa look better than it actually was.

Oh i agree, i think especially rogue has extremely benefitted from the MoP Talent system, which paved the way for making certain abilities baseline.
Up until MoP, you didn't have Shadowstep or Cheat death unless you went Sub, thanks to MoP, Assa / Combat suddenly had access to both.

But yeah, Blizzard obviously has some issues with balance, but the WoD vs. Legion discussion as far as Template / PvP armor is concerned doesn't affect that, it's more or less numerical on comparison.

[Nerovar]

I don't see how it made it worse.

The ultimate goal of Blizzard was that people went full PvP armor (which has ALWAYS been the goal of Resilience / PvP Power), so the customization there goes up in fire already, you wore your 4pc, Offset item and then bought every item with your favorite secondary stat from the vendor, enchanted said secondary stat on every piece available, there you go.
Thanks to the WoD design, the game usually told you what's the best stat for your spec, as every spec received a 5% bonus on a certain secondary stat.

Customization looks different in my opinion.

The only difference between the WoD and the Template system is the fact that the Template varies between specs and the WoD one basically gave everyone the same amount of total stats.

The major difference is that the Blizzard actively used the Template system to balance the game and flesh out certain class aspects that went down the drain over the years.

Nowadays Classes like Ret,Dk or Warrior can tank damage better than rogues, because they have more Health and more Versatility, in WoD everyone basically ran around with the same HP pool, excluding warlocks.

I don't know about you but I had multiple sets for different playstyles. On my Frost DK I had two different sets mastery/haste depending on whether I wanted to play 2h (with breath of sindra) or dw (necrotic plague). Similar stuff on my WW monk with hurricane strikes (I believe it was multistrike) and chi explosion (haste). Also I wasn't at a disadvantage because I decided not to play PvE content as you could easily get your full set pretty quickly.
Believe it or not... DKs and Warriors were also able to tank more damage than rogues during WoD because they had things like def stance/blood presence. That's where balance should come from: Actual abilities players have to use and not passive stat increases. Templates are unnecesarry and create a very weird environment that's disconnected from the rest of the RPG.

[Kralljin]

I don't know about you but I had multiple sets for different playstyles. On my Frost DK I had two different sets mastery/haste depending on whether I wanted to play 2h (with breath of sindra) or dw (necrotic plague). Similar stuff on my WW monk with hurricane strikes (I believe it was multistrike) and chi explosion (haste). Also I wasn't at a disadvantage because I decided not to play PvE content as you could easily get your full set pretty quickly.

I don't think that was very common.
As Elemental, Multistrike / Crit was your way to go, as Enhance, just Haste / Mastery.

But just out of curiousity, how much % difference did exist between the two in terms stat difference? 10%? 5%? Did it *really* impact your game that much?
Because i honestly doubt that.

Believe it or not... DKs and Warriors were also able to tank more damage than rogues during WoD because they had things like def stance/blood presence. That's where balance should come from: Actual abilities players have to use and not passive stat increases.

Defensive Stance still exists, so yeah, most stance requirements kissed the world goodbye in MoP, so that's no argument either.

Back in Vanilla armor basically made that happen, Plate armor had more Stamina than leather and obviously more armor, therefore Warriors were automatically tankier than rogues.
Armor was kinda a bigger deal because most Melee classes actually dealt mostly physical damage, but nowadays full physical damage is limited to Warrior,Monk & Hunter, any other melee deals a mixture of magic and physical which massively nerfs the value of armor.
And Vanilla was pretty much the strongest version of WoW in terms of RPG.

Templates are unnecesarry and create a very weird environment that's disconnected from the rest of the RPG.

Being naturally tanky can be part of the class fantasy, not just pressing a button to become tanky, which sometimes doesn't work because stuns.

Similiar thing exists in Moba games, certain heroes naturally have a high HP pool, high armor and Hp reg, others are more fragile because low health and low armor.
The Template system creates a similiar thing, i don't see that infringing on the RPG aspect as long as it doesn't create weird things like Mages facetanking Warriors with ease.

[Yatagarasu]

Retribution paladins will destroy in pvp until they will be not allowed to damage in BOP which was the most ridiculous decision by Blizzard

[Helkor]

I quite enjoy legion PvP actually and look forward to see how BFA will turn out, I'll try to reason why.

Legion:
On the contrary to what many people here feel about the PvP template system, I think it's good. You see, I don't play PvP to get gear, and the less gear has an impact on performance, the better. I like that if you beat someone else, you played better than them, you didn't just outgear them. Throwing stats at eachother and seeing who has the highest isn't fun.

The honor talent system is cool. It allows blizzard to make spells and passives that wouldn't work in PvE.

I never really PvP'd much, despite having played this game for a long time now. I think the most I've ever PvP'd was in MoP or WoD where I would just do casual queued PvP. Legion is the first time I've ever really tried to climb rating with my friends - and we're having a blast!
We LOVE the fact that if we feel like our comp doesn't work, we can EASILY change it up by relogging to an alt without feeling completely gimped. Sure there's honor talents, but I've found that most of our characters had most of the talents just from passive World quest grind.

My personal opinion is that the more unhinged PvP is from the whole RPG-gearing element, the better. I like my PvP the same way I like my Dota 2, Overwatch, HotS etc. That I have a chance against anyone feels good, and if I got beaten, then at least I know he didn't just outgear me.

For BFA:
I can't tell how it'll feel, them slowing the game down a bit and there being less stuns. It could definitely make it more interesting in the sense that you'll have to coordinate more. It might have an impact on Melee cleaves who rely heavily on sudden bursts and short CC. It could also negatively affect arenas simply because not enough is happening? I feel like if we reach a point where people are pretty much just standing still, throwing their rotation on a target until eventually someone dies - it'll be quite boring. But I'm optimistic, I hope it'll end up being good.